The
Library of Congress was established by Congress in 1800, and was
housed in the United States Capitol for most of the 19th century. After much of
the original collection had been destroyed during the War of 1812, Thomas
Jefferson sold 6487 books to the library, his entire personal
library, in 1815. After a period of decline during the mid-19th
century the Library of Congress began to grow rapidly in both size
and importance after the American
Civil War, culminating in the construction of a separate
library building and the transference of all copyright deposit
holdings to the Library. During the rapid expansion of the 20th
century the Library of Congress assumed a preeminent public role,
becoming a "library of last resort" and expanding its mission for
the benefit of scholars and the American people.

The Library's primary mission is researching inquiries made by
members of Congress through the Congressional Research
Service; although it is open to the public, only legislators,
Supreme Court justices and other high-ranking government officials
may check out books. Through the United States Copyright
Office, the Library of Congress also receives copies of every
book, pamphlet, map, print, and piece of music registered in the
United States. As the de facto national library, the
Library of Congress promotes literacy and American literature
through projects such as the American Folklife Center, American Memory, Center for the Book and Poet
Laureate.

History

Origins and Jefferson's contribution (1800–1851)

The
Library of Congress was established on April 24, 1800, when
PresidentJohn Adams signed an Act of Congress providing for the transfer
of the seat of government from Philadelphia to the new capital city of Washington. Part
of the legislation appropriated $5,000 "for the purchase of such
books as may be necessary for the use of Congress ..., and for
fitting up a suitable apartment for containing them...."
Books were
ordered from London and the
collection, consisting of 740 books and 30 maps, was housed in the
new Capitol. Although the collection covered a variety
of topics, the bulk of the materials were legal in nature,
reflecting Congress' role as a maker of laws.

Thomas Jefferson played an
important role in the Library's early formation, signing into law
on January 26, 1802 the first law establishing the structure of the
Library of Congress. The law established the presidentially
appointed post of Librarian of
Congress and a Joint
Committee on the Library to regulate and oversee the Library,
as well as giving the president and vice president the ability to
borrow books. The Library of Congress was destroyed in
August 1814, when invading British troops
set fire to the Capitol
building and the small library of 3,000 volumes
within.

Within a month, former President Jefferson offered his personal
library as a replacement. Jefferson had spent 50 years accumulating
a wide variety of books, including ones in foreign languages and
volumes of philosophy, science, literature, and
other topics not normally viewed as part of a legislative library,
such as cookbooks, writing that, "I do not know that it contains
any branch of science which Congress would wish to exclude from
their collection; there is, in fact, no subject to which a Member
of Congress may not have occasion to refer." In January 1815,
Congress accepted Jefferson's offer, appropriating $23,950 for his
6,487 books.

Weakening (1851–1865)

The antebellum period was difficult for
the Library. During the 1850s the Smithsonian
Institution's librarian Charles Coffin Jewett aggressively
tried to move that organization towards becoming the United States'
national library. His efforts were blocked by the
Smithsonian's Secretary Joseph Henry,
who advocated a focus on scientific research and publication and
favored the Library of Congress' development into the national
library. Henry's dismissal of Jewett in July 1854 ended the
Smithsonian's attempts to become the national library, and in 1866
Henry transferred the Smithsonian's forty thousand-volume library
to the Library of Congress.

On December 24, 1851 the largest fire in the Library's history
destroyed 35,000 books, about two-thirds of the Library's 55,000
book collection, including two-thirds of Jefferson's original
donation. Congress in 1852 quickly appropriated $168,700 to replace
the lost books but not for the acquisition of new materials. This
marked the start of a conservative period in the Library's
administration under Librarian John
Silva Meehan and Joint Committee Chairman James A.Pearce, who worked to restrict the Library's
activities. In 1857, Congress transferred the Library's
public document distribution activities to the Department of
the Interior and its international book exchange program to the
Department of
State. The centralization of copyright offices
into the United States
Patent Office in 1859 ended the Library's thirteen year role as
a depository of all copyrighted books and pamphlets. Abraham Lincoln's political appointment of
John G.Stephenson as Librarian of Congress in
1861 further weakened the Library; Stephenson's focus was on
non-library affairs, including service as a volunteer aide-de-camp at the battles of Chancellorsville and Gettysburg during the American
Civil War. By the conclusion of the war, the Library of
Congress had a staff of seven for a collection of eighty thousand
volumes.

Spofford's expansion (1865–1897)

The Library of Congress reasserted itself during the latter half of
the 19th century under Librarian Ainsworth Rand Spofford, who
directed the Library from 1865 to 1897. Aided by an overall
expansion of the federal government and a favorable political
climate, Spofford built broad bipartisan support for the Library as
a national library and a legislative resource, began
comprehensively collecting Americana and
American literature, and led the
construction of a new building to house the Library, and
transformed the Librarian of Congress position into one of strength
and independence. Between 1865 and 1870, Congress appropriated
funds for the construction of the Thomas
Jefferson Building, placed all copyright registration and deposit
activities under the Library's control, and restored the Library's
international book exchange. The Library also acquired the
vast libraries of both the Smithsonian and historian Peter Force, strengthening its scientific and
Americana collections significantly. By 1876, the Library
of Congress had 300,000 volumes and was tied with Boston
Public Library as the nation's largest library. When the
Library moved from the Capitol building to its new headquarters in
1897, it had over 840,000 volumes, 40% of which had been acquired
through copyright deposit.

A year before the Library's move to its new location, the Joint
Library Committee held a session of hearings to assess the
condition of the Library and plan for its future growth and
possible reorganization. Spofford and six experts sent by the
American Library
Association, including future Librarian of Congress Herbert Putnam and Melvil Dewey of the New York State Library, testified
before the committee that the Library should continue its expansion
towards becoming a true national library. Based on the hearings and
with the assistance of Senators Justin
Morrill of Vermont and Daniel
Voorhees of Indiana, Congress more than doubled the Library's
staff from 42 to 108 and established new administrative units for
all aspects of the Library's collection. Congress also strengthened
the office of Librarian of Congress to govern the Library and make
staff appointments, as well as requiring Senate approval for
presidential appointees to the position.

Post-reorganization (1897–1939)

Main Library of Congress building at
the start of the 20th century

The Library of Congress, spurred by the 1897 reorganization, began
to grow and develop more rapidly. Spofford's successor John Russell Young, though only in office
for two years, overhauled the Library's bureaucracy, used his
connections as a former diplomat to acquire more materials from
around the world, and established the Library's first assistance
programs for the blind and physically
disabled. Young's successor Herbert
Putnam held the office for forty years from 1899 to 1939,
entering into the position two years before the Library became the
first in the United States to hold one million volumes. Putnam
focused his efforts on making the Library more accessible and
useful for the public and for other libraries. He instituted the
interlibrary loan service, transforming the Library of Congress
into what he referred to as a "library of last resort". Putnam also
expanded Library access to "scientific investigators and duly
qualified individuals" and began publishing primary sources for the
benefit of scholars.

Putnam's tenure also saw increasing diversity in the Library's
acquisitions. In 1903 he persuaded President Theodore Roosevelt to transfer by
executive order the papers of the Founding Fathers from
the State Department to the Library of Congress. Putnam expanded
foreign acquisitions as well, including the 1904 purchase of a
four-thousand volume library of Indica, the 1906 purchase of G. V.
Yudin's eighty-thousand volume Russian library, the 1908 Schatz
collection of early operalibrettos, and the early 1930s purchase of the
Russian Imperial Collection, consisting of 2,600 volumes from the
library of the Romanov family on a
variety of topics. Collections of Hebraica
and Chinese and Japanese works were also acquired.
Congress even took the initiative to acquire materials for the
Library in one occasion, when in 1929 Congressman Ross Collins of Mississippi successfully
proposed the $1.5 million purchase of Otto
Vollbehr's collection of incunabula,
including one of four remaining perfect vellum copies of the
Gutenberg Bible.

In 1914 Putnam established the Legislative Reference Service
as a separative administrative unit of the Library. Based in the
Progressive era's philosophy of
science as a problem-solver, and modeled after successful research
branches of state legislatures, the LRS would provide informed
answers to Congressional research inquiries on almost any topic. In
1925 Congress passed an act allowing the Library of Congress to
establish a trust fund board to accept donations and endowments,
giving the Library a role as a patron of the arts. The Library
received the donations and endowments of prominent individuals such
as John D.Rockefeller, James B.Wilbur and Archer M.Huntington. Gertrude Clarke Whittall donated
five Stradivarius violins to
the Library and Elizabeth
Sprague Coolidge's donations paid for a concert hall within the Library of Congress
building and the establishment of an honorarium for the Music Division. A number of
chairs and consultantships were established from the donations, the
most well-known of which is the Poet
Laureate Consultant.

The Library's expansion eventually filled the Library's Main
Building despite shelving expansions in 1910 and 1927, forcing the
Library to expand into a new structure. Congress acquired nearby
land in 1928 and approved construction of the Annex Building (later
the John Adams Building) in 1930. Although delayed during the
Depression years, it was completed
in 1938 and opened to the public in 1939.

Modern history (1939–)

When Putnam retired in 1939, President Franklin D.Roosevelt appointed Archibald MacLeish as his successor.
Occupying the post from 1939 to 1944 during the height of World War II, MacLeish became the most visible
Librarian of Congress in the Library's history. MacLeish encouraged
librarians to oppose totalitarianism
on behalf of democracy; dedicated the
South Reading Room of the Adams Building to Thomas Jefferson,
commissioning artist Ezra Winter to
paint four themed murals for the room; and established a "democracy
alcove" in the Main Reading Room of the Jefferson Building for
important documents such as the Declaration, Constitution and
Federalist Papers. Even the Library of
Congress assisted during the war effort, ranging from the storage
of the Declaration of
Independence and the United States Constitution in
Fort
Knox for safekeeping to researching weather data on the
Himalayas for Air
Force pilots. MacLeish resigned in 1944 to become
Assistant Secretary of State, and President Harry Truman appointed Luther H.Evans as Librarian of Congress. Evans, who
served until 1953, expanded the Library's acquisitions, cataloging
and bibliographic services as much as the fiscal-minded Congress
would allow, but his primary achievement was the creation of
Library of Congress Missions around the world. Missions played a
variety of roles in the postwar world: the mission in San Francisco assisted participants in the meeting that
established the United Nations, the
mission in Europe acquired European
publications for the Library of Congress and other American
libraries, and the mission in Japan aided in the
creation of the National Diet Library.

Evans' successor L.Quincy Mumford took over in 1953.
Mumford's tenure, lasting until 1974, saw the initiation of the
construction of the James Madison Memorial Building, the third
Library of Congress building. Mumford directed the Library during a period
of increased educational spending, the windfall of which allowed
the Library to devote energies towards establishing new acquisition
centers abroad, including in Cairo and New Delhi. In 1967 the Library began experimenting
with book preservation techniques through a Preservation Office,
which grew to become the largest library research and conservation
effort in the United States. Mumford's administration also saw the
last major public debate about the Library of Congress' role as
both a legislative library and a national library. A 1962
memorandum by Douglas Bryant of the Harvard University Library,
compiled at the request of Joint Library Committee chairman
Claiborne Pell, proposed a number of
institutional reforms, including expansion of national activities
and services and various organizational changes, all of which to
shift the Library more towards its national role over its
legislative role. Bryant even suggested possibly changing the name
of the Library of Congress, which was rebuked by Mumford as
"unspeakable violence to tradition". Debate continued within the
library community until the Legislative Reorganization
Act of 1970 shifted the Library back towards its legislative
roles, placing greater focus on research for Congress and
congressional committees and renaming the Legislative Reference
Service to the Congressional Research
Service.

After Mumford retired in 1974, Gerald Ford appointed Daniel J.Boorstin as Librarian. Boorstin's first
challenge was the move to the new Madison Building, which took
place between 1980 and 1982. The move released pressures on staff
and shelf space, allowing Boorstin to focus on other areas of
Library administration such as acquisitions and collections. Taking
advantage of steady budgetary growth, from $116 million in 1975 to
over $250 million by 1987, Boorstin actively participated in
enhancing ties with scholars, authors, publishers, cultural
leaders, and the business community. His active and prolific role
changed the post of Librarian of Congress so that by the time he
retired in 1987, the New York
Times called it "perhaps the leading intellectual public
position in the nation." Ronald Reagan appointed James H.Billington as the thirteenth Librarian
of Congress in 1987, a post he holds as of 2009. Billington took
advantage of new technological advancements and the Internet to link the Library to educational
institutions around the country in 1991. The end of the Cold War also enabled the Library to develop
relationships with newly open Eastern European nations, helping
them to establish parliamentary libraries of their own.

In the mid-1990s, under Billington's leadership, the Library of
Congress began to pursue the development of what it called a
"National Digital Library," part of an overall strategic direction
that has been somewhat controversial within the library profession.
In late November 2005, the Library announced intentions to launch
the World Digital Library,
digitally preserving books and other objects from all world
cultures.

The Library serves as a legal repository for copyright protection and copyright registration, and as the
base for the United
States Copyright Office. Regardless of whether they register
their copyright, all publishers are required to submit two complete
copies of their published works to the Library if requested—this
requirement is known as mandatory deposit. Parties wishing
not to publish, need only submit one copy of their work. Nearly
22,000 new items published in the U.S. arrive every business day at
the Library. Contrary to popular belief, however, the Library does
not retain all of these works in its permanent collection, although
it does add an average of 10,000 items per day. Rejected items are
used in trades with other libraries around the world, distributed
to federal agencies, or donated to schools, communities, and other
organizations within the United States. As is true of many similar libraries, the Library of Congress
retains copies of every publication in the English language that is
deemed significant.

Guinness World
Records currently lists the Library of Congress as the
World's Largest Library. This apparently is based on the shelf space
the collection occupies; the Library of Congress states that its
collection fills about 530 miles (850 km), while the British
Library reports about 388 miles (625 km) of
shelves. The Library of Congress holds about 130 million
items with 29 million books against approximately 150 million items
with 25 million books for the British Library.

The Library of Congress is usually quoted as
occupying, if digitized and stored as plain text, 20 terabytes of information (10 in other quotations),
based on the amount of cataloged books in the Library of Congress
classification system (20 million in 2007) and estimating one
megabyte of text per book. This leads many people to conclude that
20 terabytes is equivalent to the entire holdings of the Library,
but this is misleading because the Library contains many items in
addition to books, such as manuscripts, photographs, maps, and
sound recordings, that, if digitized, would amount to much more
information. The Library currently has no plans for systematic
digitization of any significant portion of its books.

The Library makes millions of digital objects, comprising tens of
terabytes, available at its American
Memory site. American Memory is a source for public domain image resources, as well as
audio, video, and archived Web content. Nearly all of the lists of
holdings, the catalogs of the library, can be consulted
directly on its web site. Librarians all over the world consult
these catalogs, through the Web or through other media better
suited to their needs, when they need to catalog for their
collection a book published in the United States. They use the
Library of Congress
Control Number to make sure of the exact identity of the
book.

The Library also administers the National Library Service for the
Blind and Physically Handicapped, a
talking and braille library program provided
to more than 766,000 Americans.

Buildings of the Library

Jefferson Building

The
Library of Congress is physically housed in three buildings in
Washington,
D.C..

Thomas Jefferson Building

The Thomas Jefferson Building is located between Independence Avenue
and East Capitol Street on First Street SE. It first opened in 1897
as the main building of the Library and is the oldest of the three
buildings. Known originally as the Library of Congress Building or
Main Building, it took its present name on June 13, 1980.

John Adams Building

The John Adams Building is located between Independence Avenue and
East Capitol Street on 2nd Street SE. It opened in 1938 as an annex
to the main building. Between April 13, 1976 and June 13, 1980, the
John Adams Building was known as the Thomas Jefferson
Building.

James Madison Memorial Building

The James Madison Memorial Building is located between First and
Second Streets on Independence Avenue SE. It opened on May 28, 1980
as the new headquarters of the Library. The James Madison Memorial
Building also serves as the official memorial to James Madison. It
houses, among other materials, the Law Library of Congress.

Using the Library

The library is open to the general public for academic research and
tourists. Only those who are issued a Reader Identification Card
may enter the reading rooms and access the collection. The Reader
Identification Card is available in the Madison building to persons
who are at least 16 years of age upon presentation of a government
issued picture identification (e.g. driver's license, state ID card or passport). However, only members
of Congress, Supreme Court Justices, their staff, Library of
Congress staff and certain other government officials can actually
remove items from the library buildings. Members of the general
public with Reader Identification Cards must use items from the
library collection inside the reading rooms only; they cannot
remove library items from the reading rooms or the library
buildings.

Since 1902, libraries in the United States have been able to
request books and other items through interlibrary loan from the Library of
Congress if these items are not readily available elsewhere.
Through this, the Library of Congress has served as a "library of
last resort", according to former Librarian of Congress Herbert Putnam.

Librarians of Congress

The Librarian of Congress is the head of the
Library of Congress, appointed by the president with the advice and
consent of the Senate. They
serve as the chief librarian of all the sections of the Library of
Congress. One of the responsibilities of the Librarian of Congress
is to appoint the U.S. Poet
Laureate.